The Nubia Z17 is a true flagship offer and a beastly one at that. It is built around the latest Snapdragon 835 chipset. This means a potent 4x2.35 GHz Kryo & 4x1.9 GHz Kryo CPU setup and Adreno 540 GPU. Naturally, this lets the Z17 rub shoulders with the cream of the crop of today's smartphone market.
The Snapdragon 835 powerhouse is still found in only a number of handsets. These include the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ pair, Sony Xperia XZ Premium and HTC U11 - all more expensive than the Z17. However, there are other rivals out of China which have also taken up the hard task of integrating a Snapdragon 835 chip on a budget - most notably, the OnePlus 5 and the Xiaomi Mi 6. In a perfect scenario, free of all the additional availability and support concerns, these are the contenders the Nubia Z17 has to face and beat.
Making it in this fairly new, ultra-value, sub-$500 niche is probably one of the toughest challenges a manufacturer can take on in 2017. After putting the Z17 through its paces quite thoroughly, we are happy to report that it aces the performance round.
Kicking things off with the pure CPU-based GeekBench, we can see the Nubia Z17 hold its own with a multi-threaded workload and even out-inch the other Snapdragon 835 phones in single-core tests.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Now, it is important to note that Nubia has included a special per-app Performance mode in Nubia UI 5.0. It promises to push the phone that extra bit harder for a while at the expense of more heat and a bigger battery draw. Naturally, we gave it a go, but the difference in purely synthetic performance wasn't all that big. On the flip side, the phone did start to heat up quicker, so we opted not to use it.
That being said, all the posted results are achieved without any additional trickery or boost modes. There mere be a more noticeable performance difference in certain real-world scenarios, but during our tests, we really didn't manage to trip up the Z17 not even a tiny bit. And we tried. The Snapdragon 835 simply has more than enough power to go around, without any additional tweaking. It is also worth noting that we have the 6GB RAM version of the Z17. We don't really think having 8GB will net you any significant performance improvements either, but that's a topic for another discussion.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Basemark OS 2.0 is a little bit less kind to the Nubia Z17, but its score is still nothing short of impressive. We have to confess that our original expectations for the Chinese review unit were pretty low, considering all the added bloat the ROM is lugging around. As it turns out, however, Nubia is keeping a tight grip on the background activity and other unnecessary loads.
Higher is better
Pretty much the same can be said about AnTuTu as well. It is another compound benchmark that takes a lot of metrics into account, meaning things like RAM and storage speeds are also up to code on the Nubia Z17.
Higher is better
The Z17 shows off some impressive muscle in the graphics department as well. We are just a little bit skeptical of the Open GL 3.0 and 3.1 off-screen scores, since 3 frames is a big difference on the exact same Adreno 540 GPU. Regardless, the Z17 definitely performs on par with the competition.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Basemark X and Basemark ES 3.1 paint a bit of a different story. Again, we can't really deduce what caused the lower scores for sure, but they don't look all that trustworthy. We are confident the Adreno 540 can do better.
Higher is better
Higher is better
The Nubia Z17 clearly has some trouble with synthetic tests. Some of the results we got are a bit suspiciously high, while others fall just a little short. After some careful evaluation and a lot of re-tests, with and without Performance mode, we are certain the Z17 makes proper use of its Snapdragon 835 chipset and can live up to the flagship performance expectations that come with it.
Most inconsistencies we recorded seem to be linked to the OS. We experienced absolutely no issues or slowdowns while using the phone for real-world tasks. Hopefully, we can get our hands on a proper international version of the phone soon so we can re-test everything. In case you are looking into the Nubia Z17, definitely scout out a non-Chinese version, as well. We really do think it will save you some headaches. If nothing else, Google Services are enough of a bonus in our book.
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